Biochemical engineering is a professional discipline which deals in the development, design, operation, control, and analysis of biological and biochemical processes. While the discipline as been practiced in one form or another since ancient times, particularly in the production of fermentation products such as alcoholic beverages, modern biochemical engineering began in the 1940s with the large scale production of penicillin. Goods manufactured by biochemical engineering processes include health care products such as antibiotics, vaccines, foods and beverages. Additionally, chemicals and fuels are also biochemically engineered, for example, organic acids, solvents, enzymes and alcohols.
More recently, biochemical engineering techniques have been applied to the culture of human and animal tissue cells, which requires the design, operation and control of bioreactors generally intended to optimize the growth of the cultured cells. Many mammalian and microbial cell cultures are subject to formation of cell aggregates resulting in intraparticle diffusion resistance which must be accounted for in bioreactor parameters. Moreover, the scale-up of laboratory prototype bioreactors is usually dependent on the specific design of the bioreactor.